The "Middle East and Terrorism" Blog was created in order to supply information about the implication of Arab countries and Iran in terrorism all over the world. Most of the articles in the blog are the result of objective scientific research or articles written by senior journalists.

From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."

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Friday, July 29, 2016

Islamist Terrorism, European Denial - Yves Mamou

Europeans have delegated to
the State the exclusive right to use violence against criminals. But
Europeans, especially in France and Germany, are discovering that some
kind of "misunderstanding" seems actually to be at work. Their State,
the one that has the monopoly on violence, does not want to be at
war with its Islamist citizens and residents. Worse, the State gives
off the feeling that it is afraid of its Muslim citizens.

"The concept of the rule of law means that the citizen is protected from the arbitrariness of the State. ... Currently, the rule of law protects the attackers above all". — Yves Michaud, French author and philosopher.

If a group of Jewish or Christian terrorists in Algeria, Egypt or
Saudi Arabia had committed the same kind of stabbings, car-rammings,
throat-slittings and shootings that France and Germany are suffering
now, they would have provoked an immediate reaction. Tens of thousands
-- maybe hundreds of thousands -- of enraged Muslims would have rushed
into the streets to kill, stab or eviscerate the first group of Jews or
Christians they met. Within 24 hours, no church or synagogue would be
able to open its doors: all of them would have been burned to cinders.

These words are not to stigmatize anyone; they are meant to explain what terrorists want. According
to Gilles Kepel, professor at the Paris Institute of Political Studies
and a specialist of Islam, "ISIS calls for stabbing dirty and evil
French people... because they want to trigger a civil war." Muslim
terrorists behind the wave of terrorist attacks apparently assume that
thousands of French, Germans or Belgians will rush out into the streets,
as they would do themselves, to kill, stab or eviscerate Muslims.
Muslim sponsors of terrorism may not even be able to imagine that
Europeans may not wish to participate in the pleasure of bloodthirsty
riots.

The fact is that even if millions of Arabs and Muslims live in Europe
today, Europeans are not Arabs and do not act as Arabs do. Westerners
in Europe have delegated the "legitimate use of physical force" --
commonly, if controversially, known as the "monopoly on violence" -- to
the State.

Max Weber, in his 1919 essay, "Politics as a Vocation", claims that
the State is any "human community that claims the monopoly of the
legitimate use of physical force within a given territory." In other
words, Weber describes the State as any organization that succeeds in
having the exclusive right to use, threaten, or authorize physical force
against residents of its territory ("Gewaltmonopol des Staates").

For French and Germans citizens, the mission of the State is to fight
Islamist terrorists -- harshly if necessary. But today, instead of the
"legitimate violence" of the State, German and French citizens are
encountering only denial. The State keeps denying that Islamist crimes
are being openly committed in its territory. This denial comes in
different forms:

From Le Monde:
"Germany: A Syrian Refugee Dies While Causing an Explosion in Front of a
Restaurant in Bavaria" (Allemagne : un réfugié syrien meurt en
provoquant une explosion devant un restaurant en Bavière). The headline
(which has since been changed) is not about the diners in the restaurant
who were targeted by the suicide bomber. The headline is about a
victim, who is "the author of the explosion". This "victim" --
apparently only incidentally an Islamist criminal, according to this
narrative -- may have had a good reason to seek revenge! He was, after
all, "a Syrian refugee whose entry into Germany was denied by the
administration." He was not deported for humanitarian reasons. The
journalist barely mentions the 15 victims wounded, some severely, in the
explosion. There is only one victim, the author of the suicide attack,
which some journalists implied was not really a suicide attack, but
maybe only a suicide. The man had history of psychiatric problems, after
all.

According to the Wall Street Journal:
"He was known to police and had been treated twice after trying to take
his own life, Mr. Herrmann [the Bavarian Interior Minister] said. He
was also known because of a previous drug misdemeanor, a police
spokeswoman said."

In short, the killer is not a killer but a poor, sick, young man.

After
a Muslim suicide bomber injured 15 people on July 24 in Germany, many
media outlets rushed to portray the terrorist as the victim.

2. He Was Not an Islamist, Just a Lunatic. Ali Sonboly, the
18-year-old German-Iranian gunman who murdered nine people at a Munich
shopping mall on July 25 may be an Islamist killer, but he was more
surely psychotic. According to Reuters:

"Materials found at the gunman's home also showed he had
been hospitalized for psychiatric care for three months around the same
time, and was an avid player of violent video games, the officials told a
news conference".

Immediately after the attack, officials said the murderer was not an
Arab but an Iranian -- but that would simply make him a Shi'ite Muslim. According
to Walid Shoebat, a Palestinian-American who converted to Christianity
from Islam, "Sonboly is no Iranian. He is Syrian. His Facebook page
showed that he is pro-Turkey's Islamists". However, even more bizarrely,
some officials and media outlets said that Sonboly was inspired by the
far-right Norwegian terrorist, Anders Breivik.

3. The Problem Is Not Islam or Islamism, but Too Many Guns on the Black Market.
"German politicians have signaled that they will review the country's
gun laws, after a troubled 18-year-old was able to use a 9mm handgun and
amass 300 rounds of ammunition in a shooting that left nine dead in
Munich," according to The Guardian.

4. The Victims Are Responsible for Their Own Murders. In Nice,
France, after Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel murdered more than 80 people by
driving a 19-ton truck into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day, Julien
Dray, a Socialist MP, said,

"The fireworks... It is a popular festival, there are
families, children; it is often the only party that these children have,
and so people are eager to go, and often checkpoints are removed to
help the flow, because people do not want to wait, they want to leave,
and that is unfortunately, is the time there may be a problem. "

5. The Attacker "Self-Radicalized" Rapidly. Even if the State is at fault, it found a good excuse to explain incompetence and lack of foresight: the terrorist "self-radicalized" so quickly that he was undetectable. The daily Le Figaroreported:

It seems that the perpetrator of the Nice attack
"radicalized very quickly." Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve called
it "a new type of attack" that "demonstrates the extreme difficulty of
combating terrorism."

Cazeneuve added that Bouhlel, the Tunisian attacker, "was not known to the intelligence services."

6. ISIS Is Not Islamist; It Is a Right-Wing Organization. We
can sleep soundly, we are advised. The terrorists, we are told, are not
Islamists but Fascists. "In claiming to be part of Daesh [ISIS], the two
assassins show once again the bloody nature of this right-wing sect
with policies that are racist, anti-Semitic, sexist and homophobic," wrote SOS Racisme, an NGO financed by France's Socialist government in a bid to seduce Muslim voters.

No doubt the next attacks will produce new and interesting explanations of this type whose aim is to reassure people.

Europeans have delegated to the State the exclusive right to use
violence against criminals. But Europeans, especially in France and
Germany, are discovering that some kind of "misunderstanding" seems
actually to be at work. Their State, the one that has the monopoly on
violence, does not want to be at war with its Islamist citizens
or residents. Worse, the State gives off the feeling that it is afraid
of its Muslim citizens.

The question now is: if the State does not want to fight Islamists
murderers; if the State does not want to shut down Salafist mosques,
deport hate preachers, and break the alliance between Islamists and
organized criminals in the no-go zones of France and Germany; if the only solution proposed
by President François Hollande is to "remain united", unfortunately it
will not work. "They attacked democracy," Hollande said, "democracy will
be our shield."

But "national unity has no meaning when no serious measure is taken," wrote Yves Michaud, the French author and philosopher, on his Facebook page:

"The concept of the rule of law means that the citizen is
protected from the arbitrariness of the State. The same legal barriers
cannot be used to protect those who want to kill citizens and destroy
the res publica [republic]. ... Currently, the rule of law protects the attackers above all".

Yves Mamou, based in France, worked for two decades as a journalist for Le Monde.Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/8568/europe-islamist-terrorism-denial Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.